Competitors like Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and magicJack may think they have the hipper VoIP alternative service, but they continue to trail Skype, a company that's been aggressively building up its service arsenal through its acquisition of software provider Qik and the introduction of new mobile video calling capabilities.
Yesterday, the VoIP provider reported 27 million simultaneous users. On a typical day, Skype usually reports 25 million simultaneous users during peak usage hours.
Skype's ongoing growth is also getting the attention of the analyst community. A recent TeleGeography research note pointed out that while traditional TDM-based long-distance telephony only saw about four percent growth in 2010, Skype reported over 102.5 call minutes. In its report TeleGeography In 2010, TeleGeography forecast that Skype would "grow by an astonishing 45 billion minutes."
The usage milestones provide some welcome validation for the VoIP provider, which suffered one of its largest network outages for the first time since 2007 in late December.
For more:
- GigaOM has this post
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